2011-09-20

Solaris

Solaris OS x86-64 and its derivatives seem to mainly use 32-bit applications although the kernel is 64-bit.

Unlike on x86_64, 64-bit SPARC code requires more memory for no performance gain over 32-bit, so it is best only used when the 32-bit address space is insufficient. SPARC userspace is therefore 32-bit by default, even when the hardware and kernel are 64-bit.

"By default, perl-5.6.0 (or later) is compiled as a 32-bit application with largefile and long-long support.", and the Sun docs say this: "The Solaris version of Perl was compiled to include system malloc, 64-bit integer and large file support. In addition, appropriate patches have been applied."

You should have what they promised. A 32-bit application that can do 64-bit integer arithmetic and will not have problems with files over 2 GB in size. But it internally uses 32 bit pointers and so should be linked to the 32-bit library.